There are places in the Northwoods that still feel largely untouched by time. The old-growth forest of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park is one of them.

Hidden along the southern shore of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Porcupine Mountains protect roughly 35,000 acres of primary old-growth forest—one of the largest remaining relatively undisturbed northern hemlock-hardwood forests west of the Adirondacks. Ancient eastern hemlock, sugar maple, yellow birch and basswood form a forest remarkably similar to the one encountered here centuries ago.

The forest was one of the primary reasons this landscape was protected. Today, the Porkies encompass nearly 60,000 acres of wilderness, rivers, waterfalls, inland lakes, rugged ridges and more than 25 miles of Lake Superior shoreline.

For all of its scale and significance, the Porcupine Mountains still feel strangely overlooked. I have traveled through forests across the Northwoods, but few have stayed with me like this one. Beneath the enormous canopy, surrounded by fallen timber, moss, ferns and trees that have stood through generations, the forest feels less like scenery and more like a living record of the Northwoods.

Of all the forests I have walked, this may be the most beautiful.